Smart water meters as part of larger advanced metering infrastructure provide substantial benefits for water utilities with established distribution systems. Few water managers, however, consider their impact on new construction when building a business case to stakeholders to implement the technology. Areas experiencing population growth will realize additional benefits that will help win support to invest sooner rather than later.
Water storage tanks and reservoirs are a critical component of distribution systems, yet they can pose a significant challenge for water utilities as they often have a negative impact on water quality. Water quality problems can develop due to low turnover and/or inadequate mixing resulting in short-circuiting. While the benefits of maximizing tank turnover to minimize water age are generally understood, it is only recently that extensive research on mixing characteristics of storage tanks has been undertaken that has provided insight on what causes water quality problems and expertise in designing inlet/outlet pipe configurations, or mixing systems, to achieve complete mixing and maintain water quality.
A small water district in Breckenridge, CO, was experiencing notably high water loss from November of 2015 through April of 2016. The apparent discrepancies in usage versus production led the utility to seek out the source(s) of the water loss.
A couple of weeks ago, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt called PFAS groundwater contamination “a national priority” and pledged action at an EPA national PFAS leadership summit.
Monitoring of disinfectant residuals ensures that sufficient protection is maintained at all points in the distribution system. The absence of a disinfectant residual means that suppression of microbiological growth is much more difficult and the rate of regrowth can be significantly accelerated. But does maintaining an adequate disinfectant residual provide enough protection?
Analytic measuring technique provides a huge number of procedures to determine the concentrations of substances in an unknown sample, e.g. photometry, titration or mass spectrometry.
In April 2013, City Utilities started up three Microclor Model MC‐1500 skid systems, each rated at 1,500 pounds per day of free available chlorine.
Drinking water utilities have a lot on their plates. Aside from the inherent technical difficulty of providing a vital service, they have to maintain positive customer relations, contend with increasingly strained budgets, and run operations with as little stress to employees as possible.
A 24” HDPE pipeline providing water to Sullivan’s Island was installed and submerged under the channel. After installation and put into service, a fused joint failed. A temporary repair, using available products located at local warehouse, to keep customers in service was completed. The local public utility needed a permanent, pressure repair solution to be installed, by dive technicians underwater, without disruption to service to island. Read the full case study to learn more.
In today’s economic environment when profits are reduced due to rising costs, it is necessary to find ways to save time and money.
The 37 million gallon per day William B. Cater Water Treatment plant serves City of Santa Barbara with the majority of its drinking water while also supplying treated water to the districts of Montecito Water, Carpinteria Valley Water, Goleta Water, and La Cumbre Water.
In the early days of variable frequency drive (VFD) technology, the typical application was in process control for manufacturing synthetic fiber, steel bars, and aluminum foil.
Corrosion occurs because metals tend to oxidize when they come in contact with oxygenated water, resulting in the formation of stable metal oxides.
Electrodeionization (EDI) is widely used in many industrial water treatment systems throughout the world. In order to maximize the operating stability and life expectancy of an EDI system they were often designed with double pass RO using caustic injection pretreatment.
Turbidity, or the relative clarity of a liquid (in this case drinking water), is caused by the presence of microscopic particles such as clay, silt, or other fine undissolved matter
QuEChERS is a Quick-Easy-Cheap-Effective-Rugged-Safe extraction method that has been developed for the determination of pesticide residues in agricultural commodities.
Process design in water treatment is historically confined to proprietary or user-defined spreadsheets on a unit operation basis, with users manually adding results from each unit process upstream into the next operation.
The simplicity of the compact, battery-powered Telog HPR-31 enables you to put it to work within minutes of unpacking. Once installed, the Telog HPR-31 measures water pressure at user programmable rates up to four samples per second with its internal pressure transducer. You can determine how often such data is summarized for reporting. The recorder computes any combination of minimum, average and maximum pressure measurement at each interval according to your selection of statistics and recording intervals. Recorded data may be gathered via an RS-232 connector using a handheld device or a laptop.
Many factors affect performance of a pH electrode. When performance degrades, it is always a challenge for the analyst to identify the cause. Common troubleshooting procedures, which include evaluation of slope, electrode drift, time response, and accuracy, take considerable time. By Thermo Fisher Scientific
In 2013 the Drinking Water Inspectorate for England & Wales announced that water samples collected in England and Wales must be tested in a laboratory that meets specific standards for drinking water sampling and analysis. At the time of the new instruction, the chlorine method employed at the Welsh Water Bretton laboratory was unable to meet these requirements, notably for the prescribed limit of detection. This prompted the laboratory to investigate new analytical options for monitoring residual chlorine.
Plas-Tanks Industries offers the following services for fiberglass reinforced plastic (FRP) tanks
Coriolis mass flow meter systems, sensors, and transmitters utilize the latest technology for high performance.
Recordall Compound Series Meters from Badger Meter combine two metering technologies in one innovative package. A positive displacement chamber measures low flow, while a turbine chamber records high flow. These meters are an ideal choice for facilities that experience rapid and wide fluctuations in water demand, such as hospitals, universities, residential complexes and manufacturing or processing facilities.
Toray's Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) process is a combination of biological wastewater treatment and membrane filtration.
The simplicity of the compact, battery-powered Telog HPR-31 enables you to put it to work within minutes of unpacking. Once installed, the Telog HPR-31 measures water pressure at user programmable rates up to four samples per second with its internal pressure transducer. You can determine how often such data is summarized for reporting. The recorder computes any combination of minimum, average and maximum pressure measurement at each interval according to your selection of statistics and recording intervals. Recorded data may be gathered via an RS-232 connector using a laptop.
Simplify water analysis with a new class of spectrophotometers.
Americans should feel confident that the water delivered to their homes by a public water system is safe to drink. But when residents of Martin County, Kentucky turn on their taps, the water may be discolored, smell like bleach, and make children itch after bathing.
Though the elephant in the room (Texas v. New Mexico court case) loomed large, hundreds of water researchers and experts who converged for the second annual Two Nations One Water summit in Las Cruces, NM, quickly went to work to explore water strategies for managing shared water resources amidst drought, climate uncertainties, and population growth.
Water is essential to life. And it is a very precious commodity in Israel, home to 9 million people living in a rocky desert that receives about 10 inches of rain a year. By comparison, Denver, considered semi-arid, gets about 15 inches of rain a year, which is about a fourth of the precipitation a tropical city such as Miami receives.
As PFAS and a host of other pollutants threaten water systems and erode public confidence, the water industry fights back with a comprehensive action plan.
The question of liability and oversight pertaining to the pollution of “navigable waters” via groundwater flow is on the docket for the Supreme Court — and on the minds of wastewater treatment operators.
They say we all live downstream from someone and upstream from someone else — a reminder, quite literal for the water industry, of our interconnectedness and responsibility to others. In New York, the Army Corps of Engineers proved how relatively small infrastructure improvements can have outsized impact.
When treatment plants with sand filtration require increased filtration capacity or improved performance, the Forty-X™ Disc Filter is recommended. This high-rate tertiary filter fits into a fraction of the footprint required by traditional sand filters. It increases throughput, improves efficiency and minimizes lifecycle costs. Each filter is backed by the experience & expertise of Evoqua product experts who can assist with making recommendations to meet specific operational requirements.
In most developed countries, drinking water is regulated to ensure that it meets drinking water quality standards. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Drinking water considerations can be divided into three core areas of concern:
Drinking Water Sources
Source water access is imperative to human survival. Sources may include groundwater from aquifers, surface water from rivers and streams and seawater through a desalination process. Direct or indirect water reuse is also growing in popularity in communities with limited access to sources of traditional surface or groundwater.
Source water scarcity is a growing concern as populations grow and move to warmer, less aqueous climates; climatic changes take place and industrial and agricultural processes compete with the public’s need for water. The scarcity of water supply and water conservation are major focuses of the American Water Works Association.
Drinking Water Treatment
Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.
There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used for contaminant removal and the removal of pathogens to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.
The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.
The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.
During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.
Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.
Drinking Water Distribution
Drinking water distribution involves the management of flow of the treated water to the consumer. By some estimates, up to 30% of treated water fails to reach the consumer. This water, often called non-revenue water, escapes from the distribution system through leaks in pipelines and joints, and in extreme cases through water main breaks.
A public water authority manages drinking water distribution through a network of pipes, pumps and valves and monitors that flow using flow, level and pressure measurement sensors and equipment.
Water meters and metering systems such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) allows a water utility to assess a consumer’s water use and charge them for the correct amount of water they have consumed.
